Exploiting SEC Filings

TODO: make this longer and more engaging.

Still, I can remember driving home from high school. I was on the phone with customer service hotlines trying to get three brokerage accounts approved at once.

In the end, I would have hundreds of these accounts. Each with just enough balance to keep it open.

I was calling because in the next trading day, Acorda Therapeutics was reverse splitting (bundling shares to make them look more valuable). My opprotunity. Their SEC filing had a clause mentioning that if your shares weren’t divisible by 20, you would recieve an extra share. Effectively rounding up your balance. This had been going on for months. Often, netting a steady $10-100 per stock split. Acorda Therapeutics was different. For EACH of my hundreds of accounts, I would net $10.

That’s thousands of dollars with no work. Millions including my peers. To the dying company, we were Goliath.

We never expected what happened next.

We were a group not more than 200 people. Communicating over a Discord side chat.
After that day, June 1, 2023, everybody knew. Evident by the three month dry spell, no company would ever “round” their reverse stock split again.

Now, we pay homage to the companies who fell victim.

May their next good deep go unpunished.

Note: This is a true autobiographical story about me. I just saw a reddit post of people who are still doing it. Interesting. For more, I think this might be something to look at. https://www.sifma.org/research/white-papers/reverse-stock-splits-and-fractional-share-management-a-framework-for-market-integrity Okay, I found a company still rounding. it looks like I’m doing this for the next couple of hours. Wow. I had no idea it was still going on. It’s been three years.